Chapter Text
At some point when Viktor had his back turned, Piltover thawed.
For all that he stays cooped inside labs or classrooms, the passing of the seasons has become more of an afterthought; the enjoyment of which now a luxury of free time he’s not often afforded, granted only in the space of his short journey home on the nights he doesn’t fall asleep at his workbench. And Jayce, with his pathological need to be in the light, has created for himself a personal mission: get Viktor outside. At all costs.
He’s just dogged about it, citing medical papers about the effects of fresh air until Viktor is certain he’s just pulling things out of his ass, and if he’s ignored long enough (which he is) Jayce’s charm turns to petulance, groaning at Viktor and making himself a nuisance until all productive thought is aimed toward not throwing a wrench at his head.
“Viktor. Hey. Are you even listening to me?”
Sometimes Viktor feels like one of those patchy-haired, scuttling alley creatures. Like he could just snap one of these days, hissing and spitting, and clamp his jaws down full strength. That would make him feel better, he thinks. Jayce waves a hand in front of his face, tempting fate.
“Come on,” he whines, dragging out the words like a child. He plants that hand firmly atop Viktor’s notes– the notes he’s currently trying to finish.
Viktor feels his eye twitch. “Jayce.”
“Oh, so you do know I’m here?" Viktor sighs, but he barrels on. "We’ve been working for nearly twelve hours straight. I’m hungry, the sun’s about to set. Let’s at least take it back to your place?”
“What? No, I’ll just finish it– ah! The ink is wet, Jayce!”
Viktor waves his hands about as Jayce gathers up his papers and notebooks, stacking them messily before tucking them under his arm. Viktor seethes.
“I have things to do– we,” he says pointedly, “have things to do. Our presentation is this week.”
He reaches to take them back only for Jayce to dance just out of his grasp. In a miraculous feat of self control, Viktor manages not to throttle him.
See, there are times where Viktor daydreams about finding another man– an impossible man– with an exact replica of Jayce’s genius. One less obnoxious. One who, upon suffering the cataclysmic force of Viktor’s glare, didn’t return it with puppy eyes until he inevitably began to crack.
“If you think this is cute, it isn’t.”
“I’m not trying to be cute,” Jayce insists, though Viktor knows him better than that. “I’m trying to stop you from working yourself into an early grave. Now come have dinner with me.”
He pauses and does something with his face that can only be replicated by the most downtrodden and manipulative of street orphans. He tilts his chin down, rounds his shoulders, leaning one hip on the table as he pins Viktor with this– look, eyes round and wet and depthlessly tragic, like his heart’s breaking and it’s all Viktor’s fault and, Viktor realizes too late, the squeeze his chest gives in response is the first sign of defeat.
“Please, Vik. Don’t make me go alone.”
Viktor’s eyes dart about the room with the desperation of a man grasping at pebbles and roots, anything to stop himself from being dragged over the edge of a very steep, very charismatic cliff.
Jayce’s smile pulls him under. Viktor’s stomach twists at the sight of it and the air pushes from his lungs, half frustration and half… something else.
“Fine,” he bites, and grabs for his cane.
These outings never last long. Just enough for Viktor to get on the wrong side of chilly, but they always leave before his joints really begin to ache. Then Jayce walks him home, eagerly discussing whatever ideas graced him that day, knowing full well that their mutual inability to let a topic drop will always result in Viktor inviting him in.
Tonight finds them in one of the academy’s courtyards. They come here often enough that there’s a spot that Viktor has privately begun to consider theirs; a wooden bench nestled along the edge, facing out toward a gap between the buildings. There’s a beautiful fountain casting mist over the foliage and the sea is visible from over the crest of the outlook, glittering as the sun dips halfway below. The boats hardly seem real at such a distance. Like toys in a child’s bath that stretches out to the horizon.
At first, he’d thought that Jayce was just as amazed by the bite of sea air and the impossibly clear water. But secretly, Viktor is now quite certain that he chose this spot not for the fountain or the marina, but for the other view.
From certain places, high as the academy sits atop the hills of the city, the metropolis below appears almost inscrutably out of reach, the depths of which remain only known to the unseen and unfortunate. Looking down has never been as idealistic as looking up, and that’s exactly what Jayce does; tilting his head as he admires the construction of one of the hexgates, building so grand and so high into the clouds that it makes the airships look like low-buzzing flies in comparison. It should be operational come summer.
There’s a gleam in his eye that Viktor recognizes from his own reflection.
Pride. Excitement.
Anticipation.
There’s many names for the feeling that swells each time he sees the proof of their accomplishments, of this thing they share. None of them feel adequate.
When Jayce catches his gaze and turns his head to smile, that feeling grows, blooms, climbs up into Viktor’s throat. He takes a bite of the food they picked up and looks away.
Jayce leans companionably into his shoulder, and Viktor allows it. Warmth bleeds through the layers of their coats and chases away the cold all the way to the tips of his ears. They begin the trek back to his apartment not long after, just when the streetlamps begin to light up around campus.
“We can catch a trolley,” Jayce suggests, as he always does.
Viktor huffs. “I think I can manage a couple of blocks, but I’ll let you know if I’m about to keel over into the street.”
Jayce steps out in front of him to walk backwards. In his academy uniform with a book bag over his shoulder, he looks strikingly boyish, even as his brow furrows.
“You sure you’re good?”
“Jayce. You ask me that so regularly that it’s beginning to sound like you’re looking forward to the day I say no.”
How unfair, that he looks no less handsome with a scowl on his face. Sometimes Viktor finds himself staring at the back of his neck, just looking for a serial number to indicate whatever factory Jayce was made in.
“You know that’s not it,” he insists.
“No? What is it, then? We’re too old to be playing knights in shining armor, Jayce. I don’t want to be your princess.”
There’s a flash behind Jayce’s eyes, like the click-spark-scrape of jammed cogs, and the red of his ears from the nipping cold travels to color his cheeks as well.
He opens his mouth and shuts it again. Purses his lips, like that might staunch the free-bleed of nonsense most assuredly brewing behind his teeth. He’s so utterly incapable of shutting up, is the issue, needing to be seen and heard for every thought that flies through his brilliant head. Jayce would gladly braid his own noose and hang himself with it in the town square, if only to be the center of the spectacle.
It should bother Viktor more, he supposes. And it’s a rather uncharitable observation to make of a friend. But Jayce can be an arrogant, pigheaded bastard at the end of the day, and Viktor is all the more fond of him because of it. Maybe that’s the real cause for concern.
Jayce swallows, getting twitchy and nervous in the silence as he tries to parse together the right thing to say, and Viktor delights in watching him squirm.
Perhaps he’s a bit of a bastard, too.
“... I’m just saying. You won’t drop dead if you let me help you, sometimes.”
“How gallant,” Viktor drones.
Jayce laughs, still pink-cheeked. “Don’t be a dick.”
“No, really. I’m moved by your offer. Next time I feel as though I can’t manage the quarter-mile back to my apartment, your arms will be the first I swoon into.”
Jayce’s grin is a flash-bang. Viktor’s hair stands on end from the electricity.
“I might drop you just for the attitude,” he threatens.
Viktor’s smiling too, he realizes. There’s a caged bird battering around in his chest, and Jayce is walking closer now, still smiling at him, and– really, he’s quite tall, isn’t he? Viktor’s tongue sticks to his palate, dry.
“You wouldn’t,” he finally manages. Jayce cocks his head, lips quirking. “That savior complex of yours won’t allow it.”
When Jayce laughs again, Viktor’s stomach jumps at the sound like he’s been startled. But he hasn’t. He’s as steady as ever, following Jayce’s lure down the street.
“I know I’m not your savior, Viktor,” Jayce says. Above them, the sky is bruising into purples and blues, making the gold of the lamplight stand out in his hair. It smells like it’s going to rain, and Jayce is looking at him differently, now. Softer. “Though… I mean. The argument could be made that it’s the opposite.”
Viktor’s frigid fingers grip a little tighter at his cane.
“That’s… a bold statement to make, Jayce,” he murmurs.
Jayce nods eagerly, “I know. I know that, but it’s true.”
Viktor begins to shake his head but Jayce just smiles, letting his words hang between them.
“I don’t have a complex, by the way,” he adds for posterity some time later. “Asshole. I just want you to know that I’m here. For you.”
“Such a gentleman. However, I think if you were to scoop me up like a damsel in distress, it would do more harm than good. The humiliation alone would kill me."
Jayce barks out a laugh and puts a hand to his chest. “Ouch, really?"
“Really.”
“I’ll have you know,” he says, chin in the air, “lots of people would be glad to be carried by me.”
“You’d certainly like to think so.”
“Are you having fun? Poking at my pride for your own amusement like that?”
The tilt to his lips says he’s not so bothered by it. If anything, it looks like he’s enjoying this, suffering under Viktor’s little comments while they both pretend like there’s anywhere else in the world they’d rather be.
The cobblestones are still wet from that afternoon. The air is fresh, decadently so. Along the sidewalk blooms vibrant townhouse gardens and Viktor marvels at them in secret, in the few moments where Jayce isn’t looking. It’s lovely. He can’t imagine for an instant why anyone would rather sit in a trolley and miss all these fine, perfect details.
“Good evening.”
They both turn and look toward two girls that pass them on the street. Viktor hadn’t even noticed them. One giggles behind her hand and the other glances over her shoulder, coy as she twirls her parasol. Jayce’s lips part, then his smile grows.
“Good evening,” he calls back.
He lingers on them for a moment. Viktor snorts. When Jayce falls back into step with him he’s still smiling; this pleased, feline little thing. It would look absolutely insufferable on anyone else.
“You know,” Viktor says, “I really don’t think your pride needs any help, my friend.”
Jayce rolls his eyes, but the look he gives him is sly.
The rumors about Jayce aren’t true, you know.
No, in fact, he’s even flightier with his affections than the wide-eyed undergrads like to speculate. The only thing stopping him from being something of a scoundrel is the fact that he’s horribly gentle about it, and things– generally– tend to shake out on good terms.
Jayce calls it being considerate, but Viktor disagrees. If he was actually considerate, he wouldn’t rope people in with every intention to drop them the moment it became obvious that they can’t keep up, because who can, with someone like Jayce?
To answer simply: Viktor can. And does. And has been, for the past... two and a half years, now?
That’s just fact, not to be mistaken as anything else. Jayce’s romantic inclinations are as inconsequential to him as the weather, in all honesty, and barely worth noting in the barrage of thoughts taking up residence in Viktor’s busy mind. It’s so unfathomably below him to prioritize Jayce’s attention like another girl to be brushed aside at a cocktail party, it’s asinine to even consider the observation adjacent to the taxonomic class of jealousy.
Viktor is here. They are not. And that means something, about him and Jayce, though he’s about as willing to examine it as he is willing to peel off his own fingernails.
“I wish you’d just go with me to these things,” Jayce mutters. There’s a single mirror in the entire lab and he’s the only one to ever give it any use. “It would be nice. You know, to have one person there who doesn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out after ten minutes of conversation.”
Viktor rolls his own from behind his goggles and shoves them up onto his forehead, rubbing at the marks they dug into his cheeks.
“Isn’t the purpose of bringing a date to alleviate that exact problem?”
“That’s–”
Viktor swivels in his chair just in time to watch Jayce turn, still fussing with his tie, and see his face do something complicated.
“I’ve gone out with this girl, like, twice.”
“So?”
“So, this is supposed to be fun for her! You know?”
“And,” Viktor starts slowly, “you don’t think it will be fun, if you make pleasant conversation with her?”
Jayce flits about the room, collecting his things. His coat, his scarf, his notebooks shoved haphazardly into his bag. Viktor would wince at the crinkle of paper, but this is the same man who has, on several occasions, nearly blown up their wing of the building after attempts to bully the crystals into submission– with his bare hands, no less.
Delicacy is not exactly a staple in Jayce’s repertoire. He smacks things with a hammer for fun, for fuck’s sake.
Jayce snorts, pausing only to down the rest of his coffee sitting cold and congealed on his desk, and deadpans, “What other people like to talk about isn’t exactly what you and I like to talk about.”
He checks his pocket watch. Shuts it with a click.
“I’ll lock up,” Viktor offers, like it isn’t a given.
Jayce still smiles at him and steps forward, dropping the keys into his palm.
“Thanks. I left the equation up on the chalkboard if you want to take a crack at it. If I look at it any longer my brain will melt out of my ears.”
“How upset would you be, if I solved it?” Viktor snickers.
“Oh, Viktor, I’d weep. Out of joy, obviously, because I wouldn’t have to think about auxiliary operation and fucking… convergence mechanisms ever again.”
He loops his scarf around his neck– white, today, and Viktor doesn’t care much for it on Jayce. White is a color for people who don’t work. People with manicured nails and aspirations they aren’t willing to get elbow-deep in the muck to achieve. No, he likes Jayce much better stripped down to his waistcoat, hands rough and dirty, with grease marks swiped down his trousers because he couldn’t let go of an idea long enough to find a rag.
Their eyes meet. The corner of Jayce’s lips curl to flash his canine and it’s– a smirk, a challenge, almost a little. Dashing, in its execution. Viktor’s heart gives a terrible, embarrassed lurch from the shock of it.
“You won’t, though,” Jayce taunts– purrs, really, and then he’s gone.
The keys are cold in Viktor’s clammy palm. Perhaps it’s unwise to be considering which manner of state he prefers his lab partner in. He finds himself staring at the door and gives himself a shake, grateful that Sky isn’t present to witness his lapse in judgment.
He stands and crosses the room to the chalkboard.
The equation is solved in less than four hours.
It’s some horrible hour of the early morning when his lack of sleep begins to catch up with him. Viktor sighs and presses on his eyes. His temples throb, his leg aches, and the pain from his back is making it difficult to draw a breath. Even more difficult is it to connect any of the thoughts percolating in his mind, feeling all the more like a toddler banging building blocks together to no avail with each passing minute.
When was the last time he ate? The milk in his coffee can only keep him going for so long.
He takes it all as an indication that his window of productivity is, unfortunately, closing for the evening. Looking out at the sooty clouds gathering above the academy, he decides that it would be best to brave the walk home before the night gets any more dreary.
Carefully, he puts away his notes and stacks his books. The lab is only barely lit by the lamps at his and Sky’s desks, but it’s muscle memory to go through and inspect the machinery; checking that everything is turned off, touching fingertips to the hot plates to make sure they’re all cool.
Just to be obnoxious, Viktor signs his name with a flourish beneath the solution on the chalkboard.
His thoughts turn toward Jayce, inevitably. He’s made a habit of crashing back into the lab after an evening out, loosening his cravat as he somehow finds a second wind strong enough to power him through his many, many complaints, and Viktor sits and listens, pretending like he doesn’t find the antics and gossip of high society half as entertaining as he actually does.
Viktor glances to the couch in the corner. He keeps a blanket beneath his desk for nights like these, knowing Jayce will likely fall asleep there before he’s ready to go home. But it really is getting late and– Jayce didn’t exactly go to the party alone, did he? The chances that he left alone are slim to none.
So if Viktor spends a little more time than necessary closing up, it’s only for safety’s sake.
Bundling into his coat, he shuts off the lights, leaving only a faint blue glow and the hum of equipment behind him. He gets about two steps into the hallway, turns, and–
– flinches so badly he nearly slams his shoulder into the doorframe. For what it’s worth, Jayce looks equally as surprised, though he’s the one haunting the darkened hall like some particularly well-dressed spectre, not Viktor.
He stares, wide-eyed, as Viktor swallows the shout that climbed into his throat and puts a hand over his thundering heart, glaring with enough ferocity to peel the paint off the walls.
It looks like Jayce has something to say. Something important, if the urgent look when he opens his mouth tells Viktor anything, but what comes out of him is:
“I didn’t know if you were still here.”
Viktor squints.
“Did something happen to your hands?” he demands. Jayce actually looks down at them to check. “Did you hit your head and forget how to knock?”
Viktor’s eyes scrape over him from head to toe. The only light available comes from a window several paces down the hall, so it’s difficult to tell much of anything. But what he can tell is as follows:
Firstly, that Jayce has been drinking, which is hardly abnormal for evenings like these. But he doesn’t often let it get to the point where he’s swaying in little circles, which can only mean that–
Secondly, his night did not go according to plan. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here, with Viktor, he’d be– well. He’d be otherwise preoccupied.
And finally, that he’s in one of his quieter, more melancholic moods; the kind that Viktor struggles to make sense of, where Jayce becomes clingy and sighs and turns to creature comforts to chase away whatever it is that’s bothering him. Tonight, that comfort takes the form of Viktor’s company, it seems.
Not that he minds.
He fits the key to the lock and pretends not to notice the way Jayce inches closer, hands in his pockets like a boy expecting to be told off by his mother. He leans against the wall and there’s something… disarmingly open about the look on face when Viktor turns to him again. It smooths away any residual irritation in an instant.
Viktor pockets the keys and sighs. “Have you been out here long?” he asks quietly.
Jayce doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even move when Viktor steps past him, not realizing that Jayce isn’t following until he glances over his shoulder and finds him standing like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, still watching Viktor with that strange expression.
“C-Can I. Can I walk you back?”
Viktor blinks. “Uh. Of... course you can?”
Some of the tension unspools from Jayce’s shoulders and he exhales in one long, tired sigh. He looks… like shit, actually, when he falls in step beside Viktor. Exponentially worse from the last time he saw him.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
As if Viktor’s doing him a favor.
He stares at his shoes while they walk. Occasionally Viktor catches him sneaking glances, but it’s only because he’s already the one looking. They’re nearly out of the building before he manages to find his voice.
“Are you… alright, Jayce?”
Jayce looks to him, wide-eyed, before quickly looking away again.
“Me? Yeah, I’m. Yeah.”
The tight-lipped silence that follows isn’t at all convincing, but it appears to be as much as Viktor’s going to get out of him, for the time being.
The streets are lit brighter than the lab. Now, Viktor can see that the party was certainly eventful, regardless of the outcome. Jayce’s hair is out of its style, teasing the mind toward picturing the hands that so clearly ran through it, and his finery is all rumpled, his necktie nearly undone. It looks like he ran straight to Viktor after some sort of coat closet tryst and that has no reason to needle him so, but it does. He looks away, cheeks hot.
Jayce’s vest is wrinkled. Viktor wants to run a hand over the maroon silk, to right him back into respectability. The fabric looks soft.
He doesn’t. Instead he glances at the storm clouds and holds a hand out, right in time for Jayce to say, “It’s raining.”
It’s spring, of course it’s raining, Viktor wants to reply. But he doesn’t do that either. Because he realizes then that Jayce is standing so near to him beneath the awning, looking not at the sky but again at Viktor, like his world might be ending just a little bit. For the life of him, Viktor can’t figure out why.
Jayce swallows. “Do you… want my coat?”
Viktor smiles gently. “I already have one.”
When Jayce glances down at him like the thought hadn’t occurred, his smile grows.
“... Oh. You do.”
“You’re gone,” Viktor laughs, putting a hand to Jayce’s cheek. It’s almost feverishly warm, as is his forehead when he touches that as well. “Are you sure you’re feeling well? You’re not going to puke on my shoes, are you?”
“No,” Jayce croaks, though he’s got a shell-shocked look about him that tells Viktor he might.
The walk seems to sober him a bit. He tottles over the occasional curb, but at such a late hour there’s no one to see and Viktor is strong enough (barely) to keep him upright. After about ten minutes Viktor’s fairly certain he isn’t going to hurl into the gutter.
By the time they get inside, Jayce has worked his way back down to just tipsy, I promise. He shakes like a dog the moment the door shuts behind them and Viktor yelps, smacking him in the shins with his cane, and it’s enough to break the odd tension that made their journey back a silent one.
He puts the kettle on as Jayce collapses into Viktor’s raggedy grandmother couch with enough force to make the springs groan, sighing like he’s falling into a plush down bed.
Viktor’s quick to catch on.
“No,” he says, crutching out of the kitchen. “Jayce, I swear, if you fall asleep like that–”
His partner whines in response.
“No! Get up, you’re taking a shower. You’re not getting your… hair stuff all over my cushions again.”
He whacks the leg of the couch until those whines turn into curses and he hauls himself up.
“My hair stuff is expensive, you know.”
“I don’t care when it’s all over my cushions! Get the fuck up!”
Viktor manages to corral him into the bathroom with relatively little bitching and moaning, by Jayce’s standards. When he returns with the only clothes in his apartment that would come even close to fitting Jayce, he’s already got his tie and waistcoat off, clumsily working his way through his shirt buttons.
Viktor sets the clothes on the sink.
“Thanks. I’ll be fast,” Jayce promises, because the last time he used up all the hot water, Viktor nearly took his head off.
In this case, Viktor forgives it.
When Jayce returns he’s back to himself, or at least something very near, and gone is that awful, morose look from earlier. Viktor still frowns at the memory of it, fussing with the strings of the tea bags before joining him in the living room.
“So,” Viktor says, setting a cup in front of Jayce. “Are you going to tell me now, why you’ve looked like someone killed your puppy and roasted it for dinner all night?”
Jayce pulls a face. Viktor watches him bring the cup to his lips, apparently unable to make the logical jump that water that was boiling mere moments before may, in fact, be too hot to drink. He scalds himself.
“It’s hot,” Viktor warns.
Jayce glares, wetting his lips as he sets it back down. “Yeah. I got that, thanks.”
Viktor smiles. “You didn’t answer my question.”
It’s with a weary, put upon sigh that Jayce sits back, rubbing at his face before pressing into his eyes. He’s still just long enough for Viktor to realize that the tank top he lent him is absolutely, unequivocally, comically small in proportion to Jayce’s body, and it’s– it feels inappropriate, just looking at him.
Viktor’s so busy staring at his chest that Jayce’s words catch him by surprise.
“I got dumped.”
He can’t help it. A giggle bubbles up in his throat before Viktor can swallow it down. He slaps a hand over his mouth the instant it escapes.
Jayce lifts his head and throws his hands out, looking at him with such a look of bewilderment and betrayal that another giggle quickly follows the first, and soon Viktor’s tripping over himself to apologize.
“No, Jayce,” he laughs, waving at him, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”
“You sure seem to think so!”
“It’s only that– at a party? You didn’t even want to go in the first place!”
“I mean, it wasn’t at the party. Can you imagine?”
“Yes,” Viktor grins. “I can. Easily, actually, and with great enjoyment.”
Jayce narrows his eyes. “You know, maybe it is best that I handle the talking and you sit in the lab all day. You’re awful.”
But Viktor can see the smile tugging at his lips.
He says, “I thought you weren’t really interested in her, though. More of a casual thing, like you said?”
“Well, I wasn’t not interested in her, she’s– a really sweet girl, actually, she wants to be a nurse. But that’s not the point,” Jayce insists.
“I’d love to hear the point, if you’d ever like to get around to it.”
Jayce sinks lower against the couch, despondent. If his shirt rides up a little more and shows off the trail of hair that disappears under the waistband of his briefs, that’s neither here nor there, as far as Viktor’s concerned.
After a moment, Jayce rubs at his face before pinning him with as threatening a look as he can muster, in his skivvies half-tipsy, hair wet and unstyled from the shower.
“Listen. If you laugh at this part, I will honestly kill you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Jayce raises his eyebrows as if to say Ready? Viktor nods and purses his lips.
“She was… upset that I had to do work stuff tonight,” Jayce starts. “I think I didn’t explain it very well. But she thought I was ignoring her, and I didn’t mean to, so I felt bad and suggested we, you know. Call it a night.”
Jayce clams up like that’s the end of the story, but he’s a godawful liar. Viktor can see through him to the core.
“So… she dumped you outside of the party?”
Jayce cringes. “Not. Exactly.”
Viktor blows on his tea. Waits.
Jayce huffs and blurts, “We went back to her place. Okay? I was trying to be delicate about it.”
“Third date,” Viktor agrees. Then he leans forward, forgetting his promise enough to grin. “What did you do?”
“What did I do? Why do you think it was me?”
“Of course it was you.”
“You’re really making me feel better, Viktor, thanks.”
Blowing out a breath, Viktor tilts his head and does his best to look serious. “Fine. I’m sorry. What happened? ” he corrects.
Jayce rubs his hands over his biceps. Is it cold? The heat isn’t on, Viktor realizes, and he doesn’t have a sense for these things, but Jayce is like a furnace and he’s sitting here half-naked on Viktor’s couch without even a blanket. Viktor should get him a blanket. For his legs at least, so his thighs aren’t just… out.
He snaps his gaze up again when Jayce begins to speak.
“I think I hurt her feelings. Again. On accident,” he’s quick to say.
“Getting you to admit anything is like pulling teeth, you know that?” Viktor drawls.
Jayce sits up, hissing, “Well, what do you want me to say? That I had her half out of her dress before I realized I didn’t really– want to. Anymore. Don’t laugh.”
Viktor holds up a hand. “I wasn’t going to.”
Jayce harrumphs and sits back again, crossing his arms. His knee bounces as he glares somewhere to Viktor’s right.
“... That’s… a normal thing to realize, Jayce. People change their minds all the time. You know you can do that, right?”
He squirms the more Viktor speaks, like the words are crawling under his skin.
“I know,” he bites, “I’m not sixteen, you don’t have to give me the talk. She just. I think she really liked me, and I felt. Bad.”
Viktor lets him get quiet.
Jayce is, to his marrow, a people-pleaser. Comes with the territory of patronage, knowing that a slight misstep can result in one’s entire future getting tossed out with the compost on a whim of the higher Houses. More so than anyone, Jayce knows this. Viktor’s watched him twist himself into knots for no good reason at all, just on the off-chance that it might result in someone liking him a little more. It’s… worrying, especially now that everyone in Piltover seems to want to carve off a chunk of him for themselves. Viktor wants to snap at any hands that dare reach for him.
“It was just bad timing,” Jayce mutters. “To realize I’m not really in the market for a. Girlfriend, right now.”
Viktor watches as he fidgets. Picks at a stray thread fraying from the faded, decrepit cushions.
Then he sighs and concludes with gusto, “So, she called me a prick and turned me out on the street at two o’clock in the morning. That’s what happened.”
Viktor frowns. “That’s. Awful, Jayce. I’m glad you came to find me.”
There’s a tightness around Jayce’s eyes, a wince, but it’s gone before Viktor’s sure it was even there. He scratches at his temple.
“... Yeah.”
Viktor takes a final sip of his tea and sets it down. He really only made it for Jayce.
“I’m going to shower,” he says. “The new diffraction gradients and my notes are in my bag, if you’d like to pass the time.”
Jayce perks up instantly. “With the microscopes?”
“With the microscopes.”
The grin Jayce beams at him is so bright it’s a miracle every lightbulb in the room doesn’t burst. He plucks the bag off the floor and starts rifling through it like it’s his own, and it’s so endearing that it catches Viktor off-guard.
He wonders how many people have seen Jayce like this. Dressed down out of his fancy clothes that make him look like someone he’s not, his hair falling soft over his forehead. Pouring over numbers and diagrams with a fervor that would seem delusional on anyone else.
Viktor gets that sinking feeling. The one that comes after promising yourself that you’re just taking the stray in for the night, just long enough to give it some food and a bath, only to wake six months later with the damn thing curled up in your bed.
Jayce isn’t a stray, and he’s certainly not Viktor’s. He has to remind himself of that, sometimes.
He leaves before he can ruminate much more on how well Jayce fits into his life or how well he fits into Jayce’s. Living in each other’s pockets like this, the concept can hardly be considered separate, can it?
Coming back with wet hair curling behind his ears, he finds Jayce exactly where he left him only now, Viktor notes pleasantly, his cup is empty. Jayce looks up before stacking all the papers together and carefully filing them away.
Then he turns, hands politely on his knees, and asks, “Can I stay?”
Viktor glances down at him. He’d be showing less skin if he was in a bathing suit.
“I mean, you’re free to walk home and give the university district a show, but I thought you staying was a given.”
Jayce rolls his eyes, going a bit pink around the ears. “Not my fault your thigh is about as big as my forearm.”
Isn’t that a lovely thought.
“You can always bring more clothes over,” Viktor offers. “Do you expect me to go shopping for you? I don’t even spend my money on myself.”
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Jayce calls after him as he vanishes into the bedroom to hunt for blankets. “You really need to invest in some conditioner.”
“We’re not having this conversation again!” Viktor yells back.
“You’re insane! You don’t even own moisturizer!”
“I don’t need it.”
“Everybody needs it!”
Viktor huffs and walks back to the living room, depositing the armful of bedding gracelessly onto Jayce’s lap. The urge to smack him over the head with the pillow is overwhelming.
“Bring it over then,” he gripes. Jayce proceeds to lay the sheet across the couch with all the skill of a man who didn’t have to make his own bed until he was in college. “If you can’t live without it for a night.”
The conversation follows them into the bathroom.
“You know, when you tell me to bring stuff over, it kinda sounds like you’re asking me to move in,” Jayce teases through a mouthful of toothpaste.
Viktor spits before he answers, because he’s not a heathen.
“It sounds,” he bites, “like you topsiders would shrivel up and die if you didn’t have twelve different lotions for every hour of the day!”
“Just the two,” Jayce corrects, and goes to rinse out his mouth.
“Two?”
“Yeah, for morning and night. And an eye cream, if you don’t want to get wrinkles– like the ones you’ll get from making that face at me all the time.”
Viktor scoffs. Jayce grins and wanders off to make himself comfortable, or as comfortable as he can be. He makes a show of tossing and turning, but Viktor thinks that if he really hated it so much he wouldn’t end up on that couch every other day. Soon he settles in, though, and cuddles down against the cold of the apartment.
Viktor flicks off the kitchen light, then the one by the desk. That leaves the living room bathed in the acerbic yellow creeping from the bathroom hallway, his own bedroom dark. He keeps that one on for Jayce, though at this point he knows his way around enough not to need it.
“I’ll set an alarm,” he murmurs.
Jayce peers up at him from beneath the blanket, now sleepy-eyed and quiet. He gives a great, jaw-cracking yawn.
“What time?”
“Eight.”
“Eight-thirty,” Jayce bargains.
Viktor bites back a smile. “Fine. Eight-thirty.”
Turning onto his side, the couch creaks. Jayce smiles up at him and it takes everything he has for Viktor to resist brushing a hand through his hair. He can imagine how Jayce might lean into it, the way he always does when Viktor manages to be one to reach out first.
“You should get a bigger bed,” he says quietly.
Viktor keeps his voice just as soft. “And why’s that?”
“It can’t even fit two people. I have to sleep on the couch.”
There’s a croon to Jayce’s voice, just teasing toward playfulness. It makes Viktor’s stomach bottom out and swoop.
He points out, “So do I, when I stay at your place.”
But Jayce just smiles again, tucking his chin over the edge of the blanket.
“You don’t have to,” he confesses. “You just never ask.”
The curl of his lips gets– almost shy, and Viktor feels his cheeks begin to warm.
“... Is this you asking?”
“Can it be?” Jayce whispers.
Viktor thinks about Jayce’s expression when he first opened the laboratory door. How he kept looking at him like he was about to cry. How, despite all that happened that night, Jayce still chose to seek him out, to sit on his awful couch and drink his awful tea.
Viktor nods, and Jayce smiles, soft as anything.
It’s a little awkward, shuffling into the bedroom. Viktor’s heart is racing like he’s about to plummet to his death and Jayce is walking so close that they keep bumping into each other, but once Viktor shuts the door behind them he gives a stupid little giggle that crumples Viktor’s nerves like tissue paper.
Jayce gestures vaguely to the bed, grinning when Viktor just keeps staring at him.
He says, “It’s just really small. You’ve got a kid’s bedroom, Vik.”
Viktor huffs a laugh.
“Hardly.” He throws back the covers and takes up the spot closest to the wall, turning toward Jayce. “At least I didn’t have to move back in with my mom in my mid-twenties.”
“Don’t bring that up, you know that sucked for me,” Jayce whines.
Then he climbs into Viktor’s bed like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like they do it every night. And really, could they have been doing this the entire time? Their knees bump and Jayce takes up too much room and he nearly elbows Viktor in the eye at one point but once they’re settled, it’s like one big exhale. Viktor’s body unravels against the mattress until he can’t see a reason to stay away, curling toward Jayce’s warmth like a cat atop a heater.
He stares at the tiny cuts across Jayce’s hand where it rests in the space between them. The only alternative is to look him in the eye.
He can feel Jayce watching him. Viktor wonders what he sees.
“How do you even–”
He looks up just as Jayce looks away, eyes wide like he didn’t mean to speak.
“... How do I what?”
“Like.” Jayce is quiet so long that Viktor wonders if he’ll even finish the thought. Eventually he does, each word halting and mumbled. “Like… when you have… people over. Where do you–”
Viktor feels himself pale, then go hot all at once. “What, you think I’d just do it on the floor?”
Jayce makes a strange sound in the back of his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
“I– That’s why I–”
“Didn’t you hook up with people in undergrad?” Viktor asks. This is a horrible conversation to have when their noses are practically touching. “Mine’s no smaller than a dorm bed.”
“... Did. Did you hook up with–?”
“Jayce. I’m twenty-seven.”
“Right,” Jayce rasps. “Yeah. Obviously.”
Now that they’ve firmly established that Viktor is, in fact, a sexual entity who has committed the act in this very bed, Jayce deems it the proper time to shove his thigh right between Viktor’s. He can hardly be blamed for the way he flinches like Jayce just clocked him in the stomach, but the man seems unrepentant. Annoyed, even. He squirms, lets out a sigh.
“I’m serious, this bed is just. Ridiculously tiny. This is torture,” he mumbles.
Viktor couldn’t agree more.
“You’re free to go back to the living room,” he breathes.
Jayce sucks his teeth. “No offense, but that couch is older than I am and when I sleep on it it feels like it’s made of rocks. Anything is an upgrade.”
“Then don’t complain and go to sleep.”
He watches Jayce close his eyes and nuzzle into the pillow. Something about it just breaks Viktor’s heart, sweet enough to make his jaw ache. It’s perhaps the first time he’s been able to view Jayce like this; unreserved, free to admire the dark sweep of his lashes and the way the streetlight flooding from the window catches on the highest point of his cheek.
He looks peaceful in Viktor’s bed.
And Viktor spends a lot of time looking at him, he’s beginning to realize. Much more than he should.
Everyone knows Jayce is nice to look at and, as they’ve painstakingly discussed, Viktor is not made of stone. He’s aware– detrimentally aware– of how handsome his partner is. Peacock that he is, Jayce won’t let him forget. But he’s not a celebrity, he’s not a man on a billboard or a stranger on the street to Viktor, he’s… more than that. A force of nature that takes lab notes like it’s his diary and spikes his coffee at nine in the morning and spends his free time building stupid little contraptions so he can turn from his desk and go Look, Viktor, this one’s a duck.
Viktor threw his lot in with Jayce the second he stepped into that rubble heap of an apartment and saw a second-year grad student sitting on the floor like a child, his life falling apart around him, insisting that, in the face of everything, his biggest concern was that his work be preserved. Jayce is passionate, he’s sincere, he’s leagues more deranged than people think, and he’s brilliant. He’s exactly the type of man Viktor could see himself falling a little bit in love with, if he isn’t careful.
“Are you watching me to make sure I’m trying to sleep?”
Viktor sucks in a gasp, startled, and pivots so quickly to plotting Jayce’s murder that it leaves him a little lightheaded.
Jayce smirks, eyes closed. His voice is so fucking smug. “You were, weren’t you?”
“Go to sleep, Jayce.”
“I’m trying. I can feel you breathing on me.”
The pillow is cool against Viktor’s flushed face. He grits his teeth, snapping, “Well, let me just hold it until I die, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“You wouldn’t die,” Jayce mumbles. “Your body wouldn’t let you. ‘S a reflex, ‘s’why people breathe water in while they drown.”
Viktor squints at him, horrified.
Jayce draws in a big breath, stretching his legs to the foot of the bed, and says, “Y’know what? I know how to fix this. Turn over.”
Once again, Viktor’s concentration goes to making sure his body stays perfectly still, every single part, especially the ones that respond like a trained dog to a man telling him to turn over in a low, scratchy voice.
“Pardon?”
Jayce opens his eyes to look at him. “What, you’ve never been spooned before?”
“I’ve been– why do I have to turn over?”
Raising his brows, Jayce shrugs. “I will, if you want.”
Then he starts to shuffle around in bed, pushing back into Viktor and really, that presents an entire host of new issues, to the point where Viktor shoves his back against the wall and presses both hands to Jayce’s shoulders just to get him to stop.
“No no, I will, I will,” he gasps.
Jayce glances over his shoulder. “You sure?”
Viktor nods meekly. When Jayce turns again, he lifts his arm with a smile; an invitation. Swallowing, Viktor turns and settles back against his chest, feeling like he’s sinking into the deepest pits of hell.
Jayce is warm. And he smells like Viktor’s soap. And it feels a little bit like being cuddled by a marble statue, but it’s far from unpleasant. Jayce curls his knees behind Viktor’s with slow consideration until they fit perfectly on the tiny, cramped mattress.
“‘S your leg okay?”
His breath hits the shell of Viktor’s ear. It makes the hair on his neck rise.
The best affirmative he can manage is a quiet mm, and Jayce relaxes that much more.
“See?” he murmurs. He sets his chin atop Viktor’s head. “This is better.”
It is. Viktor doesn’t know how he’ll ever fall asleep, but it is. Better.
The solution comes naturally. Between the late hour and the heavy arm Jayce has barred across his chest, sleep creeps up quickly on Viktor, pulling him under before he sees it coming. He’s somewhere between states when Jayce speaks next, quiet and careful.
“Viktor?”
“Mm?”
“Do you. Like me?”
Viktor quickly comes to before realizing that he misinterpreted what Jayce meant. It’s still, at the very least, a mildly troubling question– if not a juvenile one.
He recalls their lunches, their dinners, the dinners that are so late they could be called breakfasts. Jayce bringing him coffee each morning; the exact opposite of his order, more milk and sugar than coffee, really, but Jayce remembers all the same. The spare toothbrush sitting beside his own. The fact that he’s closer to Jayce now, emotionally and physically, than he’s been to anyone in years.
“Did I do something to make you think I don’t?” he asks, drowsy.
He can feel Jayce shake his head. “No, like. As a person. Lots of people like me, I think, but it’s not… you know.”
Viktor blinks at the wall. Slowly, his hand slides to cover Jayce’s where it rests over his heart.
“You’re my best friend.”
It’s quiet, for a while. Viktor drifts back towards sleep, the feeling of Jayce holding him a little tighter so gentle that it could have been a dream.
The next morning, Jayce is gone before Viktor wakes. And it’s not at eight-thirty, either– his alarm clock sits, silent, tampering evident in the form of a calling card:
Morning errands. Left quiet to let you sleep in (don’t be mad)
See you at the lab
J.
When they see each other next, it’s some time past noon and Viktor’s so deep into his work that he doesn’t hear the door open. He hears it close, though, and looks up in time to see Jayce take two steps into the room, coffees in hand, before pausing.
He looks at the chalkboard. Then to Viktor.
“You fucker.”
Viktor grins.